In conventional telecommunications systems, a number of different telecommunications services are offered to subscribers. Each telecommunications service requires a unique telephone number. Examples of telecommunications services that require a unique telephone number are automatic routing services, voicemail services, facsimile services, paging services, cellular phone services, and personal 800 numbers. One of the drawbacks of each service requiring a different telephone number is that managing and publishing multiple telephone numbers for a subscriber that uses multiple communications services can prove to be quite cumbersome. For example, a subscriber may have to provide a first telephone number for facsimile services, a second telephone number for voicemail services, and a third telephone number for cellular services. Thus, a subscriber must remember all of the unique telephone numbers and must make clear to people to whom the subscriber gives the telephone numbers what services are associated with what telephone numbers. Oftentimes, a party confuses the mapping of telephone numbers to services and reaches the wrong service when dialing the telephone number that was given to the party. For instance, a caller may dial a number thinking that he will reach a person and instead the caller reaches a facsimile machine.
Another drawback of conventional systems is the lack of flexibility regarding the telecommunications services that are provided to subscribers. A subscriber may need to provide access to different services to different people at various times. For example, a subscriber may need to have phone calls directed to the subscriber's workplace during the work week but may need to have phone calls directed to his home or cellular phone on weekends. The subscriber may also wish to limit the people that may reach the subscriber by phone on the weekends. Still further, the subscriber may wish to provide other people with access to his voicemail.
Unfortunately, with conventional systems such configurability of telecommunications services is not available. Moreover, a subscriber has difficulty managing a multitude of communications services, where each service has a different number. For example, if the subscriber wishes to update multiple aspects of his or her services over a phone, multiple iterative menu selections and presentations are required. Furthermore, a caller must typically call one number to update aspects of his or her voicemail services, and then call another number to update aspects of his or her pager services. Still further numbers are required to update other telecommunications services.
Known systems have combined telecommunications services in an attempt to provide more convenient services to the user. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,161 combines some paging functions with voicemail functions. For example, the voicemail system will page the user when a voicemail has been recorded for the user. Such a system can be awkward to use, since specific codes are required to be memorized by the user for many functions. Furthermore, such a system provides only limited telecommunications services to a user. For example, no facsimile services are provided.
Another difficulty users of telecommunications services suffer from is receiving facsimile messages. Often, the user may have two office locations (e.g., a home office and a work office), with separate facsimile numbers for each. If the user receives a facsimile message at one number, the sender may believe that the user has received the message, when in fact the user is located at the other location (and at the other fax machine).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,459,584 provides a "store and forward" system for facsimile messages. Under this system, a single number is provided for receiving a user's facsimile messages. The user can then direct received facsimile messages to a desired location (e.g., to a facsimile machine located at his or her home office). As with the above described patent, the system under this patent suffers from providing only limited telecommunications services to the user. Additionally, such a system can be awkward for the user to efficiently receive facsimile messages at desired locations. For example, the user cannot provide efficient predetermined routing for facsimile messages to various locations based on a mobile user. Furthermore, the systems under both such patents provide only a limited hardware and software platform functionality. A fault effecting one component in the platform could compromise the entire platform, and thereby be practicably useless to a user.